Concert Goers To Be Fucked Further & Harder

Quick, name a ticket vendor. Ok, now name another? Are you stumped? That's not a good thing if you like going to any type of live venue in any major city.

Most people know about the evils of Ticketmaster from the infamous failed Pearl Jam boycott to those fun little service fees attached to any ticket you buy. You know the ones that turn the $35 ticket into a $50 ticket for various handling fees that are all basically automated by computers.

Reading a news-brief on BBC, I was reminded of the impending Ticketmaster world takeover & that US had now joined the UK in approving the merger. Searching for a more in-depth look at the merger, I stumbled on the excellent Chicago Tribune Problem Solver Blog, a post called "Approved: Ticketmaster, Live Nation merger." The post breaks down the logistics on the merger as well as some information of just how much of the ticketing of major concert venues will be controlled by this new conglomerate which will be called Live Nation Entertainment Inc.

If nothing else, the Ticketmaster name will be gone. It's probably for the best anyway, shooing away some of the monopolistic, negative feelings from the past. I doubt it will take long till it bubbles to the surface. Probably just one summer concert season riddled with their favorite set of fees, now available at close to 75% of the venues of this country and pretty much all of the big ones.

As part of the agreement, the new company will be under government supervision for the next ten years. Do I trust that the government has my best interests in this matter? What do they care about ticket prices except when the constituencies of congress members squawk about them?

If they do decide that the market has been completely quashed in five years, what are they going to do then break them up like the Baby Bells so they eventually merge again piece by piece.

Here's the "concessions" in brief from the Sun-Times Blog:

"The Justice Department did impose several conditions on the deal: Ticketmaster must sell one small subsidiary, Paciolan, to sports promoters Comcast-Spectacor, and it must share its ticketing software with the second largest national concert promoter, AEG Live. In theory, Ticketmaster, Comcast and AEG will now compete, offering venues three choices for ticketing, and possibly resulting in lower service fees."

There is no way that the way Ticketmaster acts can not be construed as monopolizing and price gouging. For a while, they were the only show in town then came the competition from Live Nation (a spin off from another form of evil named Clearchannel, the company that ruined terrestrial radio during the end of the 90s by turning almost every major station in the USA into the same Linkin Park, Britney Spears, Nickelback filled garbage airwaves).

Live Nation's most important assets are assorted the House of Blues venues, some sports team ticketing , a large roster signing artists to all inclusive deals (covering a percentage of recording and touring), helping big time artists make more money. Most bands have separate entities representing these two parts of their business but as the record industry has gone to the toilet, these kind of deals have been more prominent giving band a one stop shop and helping established bands possibly take a bigger cut of the pie.

Artists like Eagles, Nickelback, Billy Joel, The Killers, Dave Matthews, Madonna, Jay-Z and U2 are repped by Live Nation, these band were doing their own ticketing, cutting Ticketmaster out of the pie. So what the evil bastards do? Buy the whole pie back.


Bono needs more money for champagne & AIDS. Thanks Ticketmaster, I mean Live Nation Entertainment.

This Ticketmaster-Live Nation deal has been delayed & vetted since February 2009 allowing for objectors to voice their opinion and there have been plenty of them. Type in "ticketmaster merger" into your search engine of choice and the anger will be readily visible. Just in the Google News results, which is articles from the last few days there are no less than 1100 pieces. That's quite a bit of sparked interest and healthy (sometimes vengeful) debate.

Why? Because this merger effects just about everyone. It effects the business world, it's a merger. It effects the government, causing scrutiny and outrage. It definitely effects the consumer, limiting choice and preventing true healthy competition.

What do you need to know?

Well, the hope that the fees will go down one day go down are gone. Get ready for excuses from the new combined effort about the need to raise rates as they levy their wonderful processing charge, facility charge, and never forget the fantastically titled convenience charge. I have a feeling that even after international, this battle might not be over. If there is one thing people hate, it is fee (see the fee banning, restrictive (and soon to be loopholed Credit CARD Act of 2009)

Related Articles (along with many others)
------------------
Are concert-goers the losers? (E-commerce Times)
Looking Closer at the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger: What does it mean for Chicago? (Chicago Tribune)
NPR on the Merger

Why Jose Offerman is Banned from Baseball (in multiple countries) & I Can't Stop Watching?

First you read the headline, then you watch the video.

Offerman gets lifetime Dominican ban (ESPN Desportes)

Please note: This article is not the hysterical Nick Offerman AKA Ron Swanson, the best part of NBC's Parks & Recreation. He is allowed to go to the DR any time he wants (as far as I know anyway).



I'm sure I'm not the only person who is unable to avoid clicking on a link when it involves rage and an athlete. Every sporting event is filmed from t-ball games to NCAA Women's Field Hockey. What is more shocking nowadays is when you hear about something and you can't immediately type the incident into Google and find a video of it (like when you type "Tiger Wood's buxom wife" & "golf club").

Videos have become so pervasive that they become expected. Reality shows whittle days of life into one hour segments giving people hours of entertainment, gossip for days and memories of another person's life for a lifetime. Yes I know, Jersey Shore's the greatest and you can't believe I'm not DVRing it.

Still, when someone mentions blowup and sports, count me in.

I love the minor league manager tirade collection, the angry coach post game press conferences featuring the Jim Moras, the Dennis Greens, and the Mike "I'm a man! I'm 40!" Gundys. Man, Gundy had the speech of a lifetime in that one. o this day, it still gets me right into stitches. Bad days, all I need is Mike Gundy:

To me, there is a difference between watching tempers boil on a ballfield and rubbernecking at the scene of a car accident. One is a choice and one is mistake. It may be a choice that comes filled with unpreventable rising adrenaline and pure competitive fire that only a professional (or a onetime professional can have). That one time professional in this case is two time all star, ex-Dodgers porous gloved infielder turned every team's utility man Jose Offerman. He ended is major league career where many eroding-skilled Latin-born players (usually infielders) end up, on the New York Mets where, as any tortured fan knows, these players end up overstaying their welcome, followed by an unnecessary contract extension that overpays them handsomely. (see Luis Castillo, Roberto Alomar, Carlos Delgado).


There's our man Jose.

In 2007, Offerman turned up in the independent Atlantic League's Long Island Ducks, with rosters full of "players who are not quite talented enough to play at a higher level." (Wikipedia) In comparison to pros, the top Atlantic League players make about $3000 per month, while most make somewhat less. Despite the incentive of that large paycheck, Offerman did not make it through the 2007 season due to the images in the youtube compilation...

If a picture is worth a thousand words than are one hundred pictures are one-hundred-thousand words?

First you read the headline, then you watch the video. Offerman was suspended indefinitely pending legal action against him. In the criminal case, he eventually received a special probation as the action was seen as an aberration & that he would be unlikely to offend in the future.

Until two years later that is. It seems Offerman has now left the world of player on player violence and entered the world of manager on umpire violence. Offerman was managing the champions of the Dominican Winter league, the Licey Tigers, when the fury got the best of him again. Can you have two aberrations?

Offerman received the Pete Rose treatment, banned for life from the league.

Is this funny? Probably not. It's kind of sad. Offerman has to be blackballed by any type of professional baseball for the rest of his life. Here is where it gets kind of weird.

Offerman had become interim manager of the Tigers, replacing Dave Jauss who was suspended by the league for two years for bumping an umpire during a playoff game. Coincidentally, Juass has become the bench coach for the Mets for next season, meaning if Mets manager Jerry Manuel is ejected from a game then Juass will take over. If I were an ump, I wouldn't mess with any former Licey Tigers managers.

It all comes full circle. Get thrown out of the Dominican league and becomes a member of the Mets staff, the team that takes Latin players when their careers are over, the same team where Jose Offerman ended his career. It has to be more than a coincidence.

Lollapalooza Day 1 - Daytime Sets

Lollapalooza Day 1 Part 1 (This is starting to get really drawn out)

Walking into a festival is like a boy going into an arcade with money for the first time. Lights are flashing, sounds are blaring, and he is so excited he doesn’t know what to do first. Then he plays some race car games, some fighting games, some crazy sports games, and a few hours later you’re out of change, it’s time to either a) beg for more money from your mom or b) go home and recover from the exhaustion. Yet, if you keep playing, you might be worn out from too much video gaming. That’s a long way of saying that day one of three day music festival is when you decide to pace yourself smartly or blow your wad early and try to see every band, disregarding your health or your earlobes.

The Main Centralpoint of Lollapalooza - The Fountain with a Skyline View in Grant Park, Chicago

So after going through the front gate search teams, which were pretty laid back, the first land mark in Grant Park is a fountain. Take another look at it if you’re a real early 90’s TV fan. Don’t worry if you don’t see it. It took my girlfriend’s post trip immediate reaction to the picture to receive the “a-hah” moment. It’s the fountain form the opening credits of “Married with Children. “ It must have been a subconscious thing that made me take at least twenty pictures of it. The surprising thing is that one of two young men that attended Lollapalooza with me claims to be “a huge ‘Married with Children’ fan”.

The second thing you get is the full schedule. You look at the schedule and is seems like a mall filled with bands. Stages are sponsored and named after recognizable things which you constantly heard around the grounds. I’m heading over the Myspace stage to see band x. Stages like Adidas, Bud Light, Playstation and the main stage AT&T.

So after that long introduction that you didn’t need, here’s some short thoughts on the bands that I actually did see.

On the Citi Stage, Chicago’s own Chin Up Chin Up put on quite a show. Usually the early bands of the day are the bands that no one has really heard and people that go are mostly dedicated music fans or ones who feel the need to get the most for the money. I guess I fall into the first category and highly enjoy Chin Up’s latest album This Harness Can't Ride Anything. Lead Singer Jeremy Bolen looks kind of like Beck with a fro. Here’s some pics along with a video I shot.

While walking to the adjacent stage AT&T to see first main stage type crowd for Ted Leo as I tried familiarize with the grounds somewhat. I listened to a few songs of Ted Leo, then I checked out the big A/C and Internet tent to experience the comfort that would by the end of the day be impossible to get into if the awful humidity kept up. Ted Leo was good but I’ve seen him before and this specific performance wasn’t too impressive. It was more enjoyable to watch him in HD in the air conditioning tent. 2 hours into Lollapalooza and I already took my first break.

I passed by the Playstation stage and saw a few minutes of Bang Bang Bang who were decent. But it was time for me to arrive a few minutes early in eager anticipation for one of the performances I was coming to Chicago for, Polyphonic Spree.

For those unfamiliar, Polyphonic Spree is a 20 plus member rock orchestra known for their enthusiastic, all out performances as well as leading the world in singing songs directed at the Sun in one album. Led by ex-Tripping Daisy frontman Tim Delaughter, this band of merry men in women dance, sing and play instruments ranging from the guitar and drums to a harp. The Spree came out in their newish Black Military outfits and made the sun shine all over the crowd even more than it already was. The crowd was excited and ready to start enjoying the benefits of a festival where artists pull out all the stops to impress in front of megacrowds in a shortened set.



40 minutes of pure enjoyment later, the Spree walked off stage but Tim let the crowd know that the show wasn't over they just needed to change costumes. Soon enough the band was running through the crowd in their trademark colorful robes lead by the sight of one the band's brass holding up a trombone player. Their encore upped the enrgy to another level as Tim really incited the crowd for the first time by imploring them to sing along to a cover of Nirvana's "Lithium." (Sidenote: Patti Smith also covered Nirvana later on at the fest, playing her version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit.")

I just so happen to have a video of the Spree featuring 98% video of the band and 2 percent of one of the guys who took the trip with me, Andy Candy. He gave the Polyphonic Spree set a big thumbs up.

Polyphonic Spree covers "Lithium"

After Polyphonic Spree, almost anything would be a letdown but we went over to see Sparklehorse (led by a former Flaming Lip Mark Linkus) for a few songs and they were average. Sparklehorse has some excellent songs but I didn't seem to catch many of them in half the set and if a band doesn't grab your attention quick enough, their are seven other stages that you can try out. I flowed from Electric Six to a quick bite to eat as MIA blared from an adjacent stage. Then I saw THe Rapture play 3-4 songs, primarily off Pieces of the People We Love which had a decent crowd for a side street stage. I'd seen MIA about two weeks before and was not really thirsting for more. The Rapture are a fun band but being from NYC-area, I can see them like 4 times a year.

So I ran off mid-set to catch one of the most intriguing bands at Lollapalooza, Blonde Redhead. I'd been meaning to cross them off my list of concerts to go to but it never quite happened until this point. Musically, they have a very Air-like sound with dueling vocals of a more high pitched male/ lead guitarist Amedeo Pace with the primary vocalist, the enchanting Asian woman Kazu Makino. Amedeo's twin brother Simone excels in atmospheric drumming of an excellence.



Blonde Redhead’s set was heavy on their latest, as with most artists on the festival circuit, but unlike most artists that didn’t bother me a bit. 23 is an early contender for album of the year and even more majestic in live performance. They also threw in my favorite song in their catalog "In Particular" off another great album of theirs named Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons Every piece of the show mesmerized me and for the hour long set I was squarely focused on the essence of this show that pervaded. It was one of the most awe inspiring and consistent one hour sets I'd seen in a long time. The shy band didn't take time to make jokes are played around, they just conquered the crowd with music. When Kazu is not dancing or playing guitar, she sits on her black do/horseseat and plays a lovely melodic piano.




Here's a video of "In Particular."


Hope you enjoyed my overly verbose rundown. Let me know what you think in the comments.